Eve is a sandbox, and we are the meddlesome toddlers who take your favorite toy when you’re not looking

Eve Blog Banter #18: Enter The Ninja

Welcome to the eighteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than me, CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

On May 6th 2010, EVE Online celebrated its 7th Anniversary. Quite a milestone in MMO history, especially considering that it is one of the few virtual worlds out there to see its population continually grow year after year. For some of you who’ve been here since the very beginning, EVE has evolved quite a lot since its creation. With the expansion rolling out roughly twice a year, New Eden gets renewed and improved regularly. But, how about you the player? How has your gaming style evolved through the years or months since you’ve started playing? Have you always been a carebear, or roleplayer? Have you only focused on PvP or have you given other aspects of the game a chance – say manufacturing. Let’s hear your story!

I can’t honestly remember my exact reason for joining Eve Online almost 2 years ago. For some people I’ve come to know in this game, Eve was the obvious next step once they got bored with WoW, or the further exploration of their die-hard absolutism with sci-fi games. But Eve is the first MMO I’ve ever played, and aside from some pretty epic alcohol-fueled Halo-tournaments with my old college roommates, I’ve also never really considered myself much of a gamer at all.

Ultimately, I think what appealed to me and drew me in was the level of control you had over your own play-style; there’s this open-ended, non-end-game aspect to Eve which is what I feel is its pulse, and the play-style I’ve come to embrace is completely intertwined with that concept.

After about a month of lurking around my NPC corp chat, I was recruited into a group of guys called the Minmatar Training Associates. MTA specialized in PVE combat and fine tuning the art of grinding missions for isk and standings. Yes, its funny and slightly embarrassing to think of myself in terms of where I am now in Eve ever being in a corp like that, but the truth is I learned a lot from those guys in my few months with them; fitting advice, how not to mix guns and ammo types, the folly of hull-tanking, and why I was wrong to believe a Hulk was the ultimate low-sec roaming platform.

So I ran missions, tried to show up in time for mandatory training ops, didn’t have a lot of fun, and generally turned my “game” into a job. Needless to say, after only about a month or so though, I was literally on the cusp of throwing in the towel and canceling my subscription. I think the breaking point was some horrible shitty level 1 mission that involved mining some absurd amount of ore out of this mission space that couldn’t be bought on the market, and it literally took about 30 trips in my mission-Slasher (lol) to get the job done. This. Sucks.

My salvation? Seeing my first glimpse of what I would come to know as “tears”. Some guy in local was sputtering and absolutely raging about “those @*%$## $&@^*# ninja thieves!” breaking into his mission and stealing his salvage. Hang on now, whats this? I immediately googled “Eve ninja thieves” and was almost instantly brought to Tchell Dahhn’s Ninja Manifesto. I read it, twice, and I never looked back.

I immersed myself in Kahega Amielden’s now-infamous Ninja Salvaging Guide, and I gleaned every scanning tip I could find back then. Scanning down my first mission-gate was like opening a door to another whole game inside Eve, and garnering my first boo-hoos from a mission runner was the icing on the cake. I bid my farewells to MTA, submitted my app to SN, and the rest is history.

So somehow along a strange road, I went from watching my little Slasher make its 23rd mining run with dead eyes and an expression of pained boredom on my face, to happily leading a corp and Alliance of like-minded miscreants and ner-do-wells in the fine (and hilarious) art of chasing down tears, bear-hunting, and generally putting a little bit more unpredictability into high-security space.

This particular blog banter prompt asks “have you been a carebear, or pvper, or manufacturer?”. Problem is, I’m never sure what to label myself. I wouldn’t say its fair to call myself a “pvper” because mostly what I do isn’t PvP at all, its assault and battery on an unprepared and unsuspecting victim (which is the whole point). Am I a griefer? To a certain extent, yes, but not in the all-encompassing, general-asshatery way that the Goons perfected the label. If I come off as an asshole in this game, trust me that its in the name of showing you, the carebear, that you may be taking things a bit too seriously. Relax, have fun, remember its just a game; we’re just here to remind you that its not a single-player one.

What I am is a Ninja Salvager and Thief, and I love every minute of it. Cheers to 7 years and a new player-record Eve, here’s to many, many more.

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